there were perhaps a few things left
to be done,
some crippled messages
that had to be carried
before I returned to myself
to see if something had been
left of me

in the landscape of displaced memory,
where boundary marks are only disfigured
mounds, the mind begins to play hide-and-
seek with itself, trying to recover
what it was once forced to bury

there was a house on the other side
of the field, and a figure standing before
it; he waited for the key that hung
on a chain around my neck, though the house
had its doors blown out,
which meant he
waited for me, to deliver myself, hoping
I’d escape with my life, my field of vision
to be kept as hostage

the scene I come to now is different,
set by some other stage designers, yet I
see myself approach a figure with a key
that hangs on a chain around his neck,
my arms stretched out, fingertips ready
to feel his blank face,
when a bird
that rested for a moment on the barbed wire
takes wing, making me clench my fists
to hold the blood that oozes out of my palms
and walk away from myself